The Administrators of eRepublik are celebrating five years since the launch of the game. While this is certainly something to be recognized, I decided to write my own article on the matter...as their blog posts make me throw up in my mouth a little.

I know that feel, Marcia

I've spent nearly as much time playing eRepublik as the Admins have spent running it. Granted, I've died and been reincarnated a few times, but as one of the few people to experience every iteration of the game...I'm going to give you a nice tl;dr about some stuff.

The early Beta days were great...and then we got the war mod (Dio be praised for exposing the wigs for their lies). Aside from the prolific bot making by the various national leaders around the world, we had a vibrant and growing community, ready to explore and expand the sandbox we were given. Our backpacks were magical and could fit multiple houses, Rhane was the most beautiful creature to walk the face of the Earth, and every time the Admins told us that cool changes were coming...we waited to experience said cool changes with baited breath. Caesar gave us awesome advice on how to seduce the sexiest Admin of all time. Seeing Alucard Bloodlust on the battlefield would make you crap your pants, and the Balkans were irrelevant.

Beta screenshot stolen from Emerick, who saved stuff like this

Hat Day for the first birthday, that was super exciting...

but yea, v1. There are still loads of v1 players around, and this is where people's medal counts pick up. Beta medals are gone, forever. Which is weird cause you'd think Alexis would want his CP medal (a medal he doesn't allow any other Admin to attempt to earn).

Every module saw changes in v1, and we saw some of our biggest babybooms with the game fully open for free registration. Here in the USA, we saw the creation of the government model we still use, the rather epic North American invasion by PEACE (the best alliance this game will ever see), and the birth of what I will deem the 'greatest generation'. Beta produced amazing players...true leaders and innovators, but it will be the v1 names that are held up as the benchmark, because that's when the game got big, and when playing here in the USA was at its most intense and interesting. It might not be fair, but people are going to remember scrabman, HR (yes, I'm counting him), Gaius, Frost, Jewitt, and others long after those of us who remember Nave, One Eye, Peregrine, and Dishmcds are long dead.

random v1 battle screenshot I found on the google

I could talk more about v1, but let's talk about the failure of v2 now. v2 gave us time management and the hex grid. The admins made the game a time sink, which was the exact opposite of what they had built for the 'average' player in the beginning. You could '2 click' and still be make a valuable contribution to the country with your working, training, and by dropping your daily fights. Time management complicated the work/train process (and the addition of happiness was stupid), allowing people to specialize in one, to the detriment of the other. This frustrated employers, who couldn't be sure if you'd work 1 hour or 23, and began the massive leap in strength levels we now know to be normal.

v2 battlefield...I spent hours shooting people

Overall v2 crashed populations around the world because taking the game from a 5 minute a day minimum commitment to a multi-hour one for those who wanted to contribute on the hex grid known as the battlefield. The admins noticed this, saw the drop in activity (and revenue) and made some quick changes to v3? v2.5? nobody knows what to call the current game...

Work skill still existed, but the different skill areas didn't. Weapon skills were merged into a single strength number (the formula for which raped the stats of thousands of players), and gold buying now enabled you to fight as many times as you wanted in a day...because there was no longer a limit on the number of wellness packs you could use. Soon, the economy module was killed with the introduction of 'unified inventory' and 'work as manager'. The implementation of the energy bar allowed you to 'time' your fights by the hour (and later by the minute) and the admins turned off the 'bot' they used to use to inflate prices and keep our world economy stable...allowing the value of currency to crash, making gold less valuable for anything but buying energy bars, and requiring the gold buyers who wish to make an impact to buy even more gold to do what they previously could with less.

no 300 gold pack, and you could only buy once a week

The new gold page...no limit on how much you can buy? Curious

I realize how pissy and butthurt this article sounds, it didn't start out that way...and it lead to a title change as well. This is my perspective on where we were and where we find ourselves now. The Admins have killed a game meant for creators, artists, builders, and leaders...innovators. Now we have a Zynga style game, meant only to keep you interested just long enough to get you to the next gold sale, and keep you playing long enough to keep you interested to get you to the next...well, you get the pictures.

We need to somehow find a way to rebuild a semblance of a community for those of us still here, and those still to come. Recently one of our players has re-developed the ability to pull a 'new citizen' list, so our DoI programs will be much more effective in reaching people as soon as they join...which I hope will help.

I've not always been the best at dealing with some of the problems we face, but I've always put my shoulder into it. My time as President was not only the final goal in nearly 5 years of gameplay, but a very reflective time for me...and I'm not quite sure to do with all of the thinks I thought just yet.

What I do know is that I'm still here, and you're still here. For now. So, let's try to do something about the game. We need more people to play as a team and fewer to play for themselves, even though the admins have made this a game meant to be played alone...geared towards individual accomplishment, and driven by infusions of cash. I think we can do it, and as our resident cynic, that means you should too.

As always, if you have questions or need help you can just shoot me a message.

You forgot to mention a few other aspects of the game, that enriched our experience, once upon a time. Like ads that you could buy with gold, the fact that it cost gold to run for party president and it accumulated on the party gold account (it could only be used to pay for ads). There were multiple levels of strategy in fighting an occupying country, besides the military module (working with minimal health and minimal producitvity for full pay really hurt the occupiers economy).

A good retrospective, but I think, in general, the players that have been around since V1 / Beta, especially in the eUSA are looking for the game to move in a direction that it hasn't been going for quite some time.

Also, what has changed about the game hasn't really led to a decrease in quality of play; gold buying and tanking is still largely a net zero game except in extreme instances, governments are, by large, still pushing and pulling the same levers they had access to before.

What has changed though is our community, and it's become somewhat of a cesspit.

I've tried many times to bring friends into the game with no impact because even after I get them signed up for the forums and registered for the AF, they just find that the people are, in general, not very pleasant.

If we want to, as a community, produce something that rivals our previous accomplishments the impetus is really on the players, not the admins.

I have been gathering members for a meta alliance to sell damage to the highest bidder to offset loses caused by the lack of bonuses our past and present leaders have lost for us.

If anyone is interested in joining this alliance please PM me. I don't care what your political beliefs are or what country you serve. This will be used as a tool to solicit cooperation from the US government buy turning critical allied battles in the favor of the enemy until the us government brings back bonuses

One of the changes I miss the most was the removal of the ad module. It really supported the political and media modules very well, and when it was removed I think that was one of the things that really shifted the game from a political simulator to an Axis & Allies ripoff.

I know of course why they got rid of it - CrowdedHouse's pornquit was pretty epic tbh - but there must be a happy medium somewhere to bring it back.

This was a very good article. I liked the memories of past versions and I agree with that content.

I truly and utterly enjoyed v1, despite it's basic design it created a need for respect and teamwork in all areas to succeed. V2 was pretty cool too, when I had the time to play on the hex field it was fun as hell!

I do have a hard time with the "play as a team" speech coming from you. I look forward to seeing you play as part of the team without feeling the need to control everything.